Here’s the current front runner to win the £25 Amazon voucher in our proposal story competition. It’s a truly heart warming story and I wanted to share it with as many people as possible.

“In 2004, Ever After did an amazing job filming my wedding to my love, Adam. It was a financial splurge at the time, but when we saw the finished product we were absolutely thrilled. A year later, my Adam was killed by an elderly driver, and that DVD became one of my most treasured possessions. At that time, I was 28 years old, widowed, and suffering from two auto-immune diseases. My family and friends gave me the will to go on, and try to find happiness for myself, but I felt that I had a great love, and lost it, and had resigned myself to being on my own. It was not the life I’d imagined, but I was ok with that.

Annie on her wedding day in 2004

In 2008, my friend Paul, who was also a friend of my late husband, had become one of my closest friends. Spending time with him & his rescue dog, Blossom, had become the highlight of my week. He invited me to a New Year’s party, hoping to introduce me to some of his nice, single friends and get me dating again. Much to my surprise, I kept comparing those friends to Paul and finding them wanting- for one thing, they didn’t come with a rock star 60 lb lapdog!

Just after midnight, fortified by some champagne, and the feeling I was looking pretty good in a fairly short skirt (I suspect this was also champagne related), I planted one on Paul, to his complete shock (to be fair, I kind of pounced on him, like a spider-monkey.)

Fortunately for me, he was happily shocked, and so began a new relationship, and the belief that it maybe was possible to have more than one chance at a true, great love.

In 2010, on a trip to Spain for a dear friend’s wedding, we were on a catamaran sunset cruise in Valencia when he stunned me and proposed! Paul had carried a ring all the way from Boston to Spain and floored me with an incredibly romantic proposal. I actually thought he was tying his shoe and then started wondering if somehow I hadn’t realized he didn’t know how to tie a shoe, he’d been crouching so long. I looked down, snarky shoe-tying teasing remark on my lips, and saw him kneeling, looking up at me, holding a ring.

I never thought I would love again, and to be honest, I didn’t really know if I wanted to, but Paul made me believe, for the first time in a long time, that someone with as much physical and emotional baggage as I have still has a chance at a ‘happily ever after.’ He loves me, even with all my illness and grief. He’s become an expert at giving me injections, he knows which hospitals have the best ERs, he lets me rest my feet in his lap as I knit each night, he brings me meds & snacks when my arthritis is bad, and he never, ever complains when I put my freezing feet on him at night.

At 34, my life has had a lot of tragedy, loss, and too much pain for one person to really process sometimes, but more than anything I am overwhelmed by love. The love I’ll always have for Adam, the love I feel for my family and friends, and the love I never expected to find again, with Paul. I cannot wait to marry this incredibly kind, patient, loving and wonderful man, and start a new chapter in our lives together. I am one lucky bitch.” Annie Bell

If you want to enter your proposal story, just go to our Facebook page and get your friends and family to vote for yours!

3 Responses to “A heart warming proposal story”

So glad you enjoy my crazy story. What I did not mention, and should have, is that Paul & I planned our wedding date around Ever After’s availability. There is no one else in the world we’d want to share and capture our wedding day. There are many excellent videographers in the world, but you two are by far the best!